New Releases by Tony Hendra

In The Messiah of Morris Avenue, Tony Hendra—the acclaimed satirist and New York Times bestselling author of Father Joe—poses the question: would we recognize the messiah if he appeared today? And delivers, in the words of Frank McCourt, "just what the country needs now—a good dose of merriment in the face of crawthumping righteousness." In the not so distant future, the tide of righteousness—in the form of executions, barking evangelists, tank-like SUVs, and a movie industry run entirely by the Christian right—has swept the nation. Aside from the non-white, the non-Christian, and the non-wealthy, all are believers. Among the skeptics is a washed-up journalist named Johnny Greco, who hears of a media-shy young man known as "Jay" roaming through ghettos, healing the sick, and tossing off miracles. Soft-spoken and shabbily dressed, Jay is an unlikely savior for this anxious and intolerant America. But as he makes his rounds, gathers followers, and makes furious enemies among the righteous powers that be, Johnny finds it harder and harder to doubt him.

A key comic writer of the past three decades has created his most heartfelt and hard-hitting book. Father Joe is Tony Hendra’s inspiring true story of finding faith, friendship, and family through the decades-long influence of a surpassingly wise Benedictine monk named Father Joseph Warrillow. Like everything human, it started with sex. In 1955, fourteen-year-old Tony found himself entangled with a married Catholic woman. In Cold War England, where Catholicism was the subject of news stories and Graham Greene bestsellers, Tony was whisked off by the woman’s husband to see a priest and be saved. Yet what he found was a far cry from the priests he’d known at Catholic school, where boys were beaten with belts or set upon by dogs. Instead, he met Father Joe, a gentle, stammering, ungainly Benedictine who never used the words “wrong” or “guilt,” who believed that God was in everyone and that “the only sin was selfishness.” During the next forty years, as his life and career drastically ebbed and flowed, Tony discovered that his visits to Father Joe remained the one constant in his life—the relationship that, in the most serious sense, saved it. From the fifties and his adolescent desire to join an abbey himself; to the sixties, when attending Cambridge and seeing the satire of Beyond the Fringe convinced him to change the world with laughter, not prayer; to the seventies and successful stints as an original editor of National Lampoon and a writer of Lemmings, the off-Broadway smash that introduced John Belushi and Chevy Chase; to professional disaster after co-creating the legendary English series Spitting Image; from drinking to drugs, from a failed first marriage to a successful second and the miracle of parenthood—the years only deepened Tony’s need for the wisdom of his other and more real father, creating a bond that could not be broken, even by death. A startling departure for this acclaimed satirist, Father Joe is a sincere account of how Tony Hendra learned to love. It’s the story of a whole generation looking for a way back from mockery and irony, looking for its own Father Joe, and a testament to one of the most charismatic mentors in modern literature.

This New York Times bestseller is a stirring photographic tribute to the New York City firefighters who lost their lives on September 11, 2001. Adorned with votive candles, flowers and handwritten prayers, many of New York City'' s firehouses seem like red brick chapels since Sept. 11. Brotherhood gives a glimpse into the firefighters'' lives after the tragedy.... A lively introduction by Frank McCourt reflects on the civil connection we feel with firefighters....The personalized spaces within the firehouses resonate as powerfully as the portraits of the firefighters themselves. -- The New York Times On September 11, 2001, more than 300 three New York City firefighters perished in the inferno and rubble of the World Trade Center. Brotherhood offers a moving photographic testament to those brave and honorable men, highlighting every engine, ladder and battalion that lost a brother on that fateful, terrible day. Poignant and stirring images, by Albert Watson, Mary Ellen Mark, Mark Seliger, Christian Wittkin, Mark Borthwick, and more than 50 other New York photographers, depict the places where those firefighters worked, the grieving survivors, and the outpouring of gratitude and love from all over the world. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Fire Chief Thomas Von Essen, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Frank McCourt contribute their deeply felt reflections.

From the notorious editor of Spy magazine comes a hilarious parody of William Bennett''s bestselling Book of Virtues. Immorality, dissipation, and dishonesty are elevated to the highest level in this unflinchingly funny look at the other side of virtue.

Pop images are combined to tell the story of a young man named Brad who wants to fall in love, live in New York, and be an artist

A satirical look at the life of President Bush offers tongue in cheek descriptions of his childhood, education, military career, presidency, and involvement in the Iran Contra Affair